A Time to Serve

Many of you know my partner Melissa. Certainly, the parents with young kids know her, because each Sunday Melissa works/plays in the Collins Room with the church pre-school kids running the Spirit Play Program. Like me, Melissa loves kids; and she also loves this service to the church. And it’s really good for her. Making the baskets used to tell the Spirit Play stories and writing some of the stories is a great creative outlet for her. She has always thought about being a teacher but has never fully decided that’s the path she wants to pursue. But she has skill and creativity and a love for kids and so, spirit play proves to be a great outlet for Melissa, a way for her to live a ministry in the world.

And that is the reason I am telling you all this: because I got it this week viscerally even though I have been talking about it for all my years here at First Universalist. Our church serves Melissa mostly by giving her the chance to birth this ministry. And it fills her life with joy and excitement and creativity and satisfaction. This church should be an excuse to do the things that you love. While we are here to serve the needs of our members, and while some of our members have served here and now are at a point in their lives where they need some help; primarily this church is here to create opportunities for people. Primarily this church is a vehicle to bring meaning and transformation to your life through service. UUR is place where you can create ministries, where you can do something that fills your heart, where you can challenge yourself. This church can help you grow, and connect to the world outside yourself.

Think of this church as a mosaic, discrete whole parts in relationship that create a more complex and beautiful whole. A collective that can do more than each individual piece could do alone and with greater depth. In the coming months, You will be hearing about different opportunities: opportunities to take part in workshops, to share your skills, to work with our kids and youth, to help raise our voice and our hands for marriage equality in Maine, to help shape the future of this congregation. So my advice is to jump in, church is not a spectator sport. And like the poet James Broughton said,

“Don’t trip on the leaps of your life…jump,
where is the view livelier than out on a limb?”

District Conference

I attended the Northern New England District spring meeting in north Conway, NH. I love the collective energy of big group gatherings and love the opportunity to connect with colleagues, see friends and drink from the living waters of our shared faith. Gathering together in this way with a blend of worship, program, and time to learn from eachother in informal settings fuels the important work done in our individual congregations in our individual lives and in our communities. I leave these gatherings inspired and grounded and plugged into our association. I leave prepared to do the work of our faith: work which is becoming more and more vitally important. And part of that work is re-imagining community, part of that work is building healthy community grounded in hope and living out a practice of love. What that looks like is up to each of us and to all of us.

Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry, was the keynote speaker and she was mind blowingly amazing. I went to Starr King School and it was really powerful to have Rebecca's presence here. Her talk helped ground me in my own calling, reminding me once again how I began walking down this path. She talked about early Christian notions of Paradise and how it was to found and made right here and now. Rebecca then went on to show how Universalism in particular connects to those early strands. It reminds me of my singular fascination with pronoia and affirms my belief that this is the next evolution or voicing of this Universalist theology.

Marriage Equality in Maine

Our representatives in Augusta are debating legislation legalizing same-sex marriages here in Maine. I just submitted a op-ed piece in support of marriage equality. Trying to reclaim the power of religious language, I used some more traditionally Christian language. Hopefully, we can build bridges with our more conservative brothers and sisters or at the very least let people know that people of faith do not speak with one voice about marriage or about Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender issues.

As a minister currently serving The First Universalist Church in Rockland and as a person of faith, I need to raise my voice in support of marriage equality in Maine.

From my contact with other clergy, I know that there are people of good faith and integrity on both sides of this issue, some who struggle with discomfort around something unknown. My work is inspired by the ministry and teachings of Jesus who stood with those forced onto the margins of society, who told us to love our neighbors as ourselves and constantly asked who is our neighbor. I see reflected in his story the call to bring more and more people to the welcome table. My faith is in a God of universal love who views all people as cherished and delights in love in all its forms.

And, as I write this, I also realize that the debate about this legislation is not appropriately a religious discussion. My faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism, will continue sacralizing families of all kinds as we have been doing for decades; and other faith traditions will respond to the dictates of their religion whether I agree with them or not.

This conversation is one of civil rights, civil marriage; and that issue has a clear answer. We are all offered equal protection under the law; we all have the right to be treated equally. Every person deserves the opportunity to stand in front of witnesses who love them and make a lifelong commitment to their beloved. Everyone should be able to take care of the one they love. So there is only one ethical path for this state and for the legislators, we have entrusted with the public good; that path is to legalize marriage for all of our citizens.

Mainers have stood for justice and for love before. In 1883 Maine became the 9th state in the union to repeal their ban on interracial marriages. The good people of Maine took that step toward justice 65 years before California and a full 84 years before all 50 states recognized the legitimacy of those also misunderstood loving relationships. Maine has a history of fairness that makes me proud to be a Mainer.

And now it is time, once again, time for this state to be on the leading edge when it comes to civil rights, equality and fairness. And I ask the legislators of this sate to lead us there; to stand on the shoulders of the great Mainers who came before and did the right thing despite the sound and fury around them. And I urge you all to call your legislator, to let them know you support them as they do their part in bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice.